Sunday, July 20, 2014

We're Entering a Bear Market

Faber has long been expecting a market decline. But for the precise reason that stocks have simply continued to rise, he's now become even more bearish.

"Obviously I've been wrong in the sense that I expected a correction to occur over the last two years, and it hasn't happened since October 2011, when the S&P was at 1,074. We've gone up in a straight line, without a larger correction than 11 percent, and I think we're not going to have a correction, but we're going to have a bear market," he said.

The first issue is that, Thursday's big jobs number aside, Faber doesn't believe that the economy is actually improving.

"I don't believe that the global economy is strengthening; I rather think the global economy is weakening," he said. And "there are other issues that may put the weight on the markets that will push prices lower. A, I think that we have in the White House, a very poor president, and that may lead to some political issues in the U.S. domestically. B, we have numberous political issues to consider, And C, we could have, potentially, a much higher oil price."

All in all, Faber is looking for a 30 percent drop in the S&P 500.

Meanwhile, it is worth nothing that while few are as bearish as Faber, several strategists have similarly been calling for a correction.

Jeffrey Saut, the generally bullish chief market strategist at Raymond James, called on Monday for a "decent pullback" in mid-July or early August. And Canaccord Genuity chief equity strategist Tony Dwyer, who has the highest year-end S&P target on the Street at 2,185, continues to foresee a 5 to 10 percent correction in the near-term.

- Source, CNBC